"Are you going to
leave or do I have to pee right in front of you?"
Jack?
Fighting the
muffled, leaden feeling weighting his head, Daniel tried to open his
eyes. Grey concrete blurred then fell away from him, his eyelids
fluttering as he struggled against the sickening disorientation.
Jack?
"Dr. Jackson?"
Hands not known to
him were reaching, touching. Daniel pushed them away and then his
own were taken and held.
"I'm here, I've got
you."
"Jack," Daniel
whispered gratefully.
"You look like I
feel," Jack said softly, the teasing note quite gone from his voice.
Daniel tried again
to open his eyes, his throat flooding with the bitter bite of salt as
his head swam. "This is wrong!" he exclaimed fretfully. "I
don't understand. Why?" he gulped in an agitated breath, "Why are
we still alive? We shouldn't be here. We can't be!"
"We weren't
rescued," Jack told him even more quietly, his weight shifting as he
sat on the bed, his thigh warm against Daniel's side.
"We couldn't - they
didn't make a deal!" Daniel pleaded agitatedly, wishing he could see
Jack, centre himself. "They didn't. We're not - nothing is
worth that. Nothing!"
"I don't know
anything," Jack soothed, gentle fingers smoothing over Daniel's
face. "I've only been awake a few minutes, long enough to check
you were okay and try to take a leak without an audience."
"The nausea will
pass quicker if you just lie still, Dr. Jackson," the other voice
warned, nasal, female and pushy.
"I think he got that
on his own, thanks," Jack retorted sarcastically.
"Hammond?" Daniel
demanded. He almost brushed away the straw pressed against his
lips but he was parched and dizzy. Dehydrated. It was
smarter to drink as Jack wanted and then talk. He gulped greedily
at the chilled water, then lay quietly with Jack's hands on him, the
room spinning as he tried again and again to open his eyes. Tried
to think.
Ignoring the growing
babble of faint, tinny voices beginning to surround them, Jack held
onto him, encouraging him to drink again, to swallow down meds, to
impatiently accept the various intrusions of the medical staff.
Harsh light streaked
red behind his eyelids for a long time before Daniel was able to keep
his eyes open for more than a second or two, squinting as he tried to
bring Jack's wavering face into focus.
"O'Neill!"
Jack looked around
as Teal'c strode into the small room, scattering the nurses with their
precious charts and clipboards from his path.
"What the hell is
going on?" Jack hissed, his face as ugly as his voice.
Folding his hands
deliberately behind his back, Teal'c scowled darkly, taking his time in
framing a reply. "The Mirin broke their word to return you
unharmed to the neutral world agreed upon for the exchange. They
injected each of you with a substance which has kept you unconscious
for a full day."
"You gave the Mirin
the penicillin?" Daniel was unable to take in what he was
hearing. He simply couldn't comprehend - it was senseless,
impossible! He knew these people. They were his friends.
It was stupid to
cling to this belief when he and Jack were alive and were here, he knew
that, but he didn't seem able to get himself free of it.
"We did," Teal'c
confirmed, frowning at Daniel. "It was not easy for General
Hammond to make this possible. Though the President was most
reluctant to deal with terrorists, the lure of weapons-grade naquadah
was too great. General Hammond did all he could to expedite your
release but the Mirin Conclave remained obdurate. They would not
grant your release before the deadline they had determined."
"Hammond did this?"
Jack snarled in furious incredulity. "I don't believe it!"
"I understand your
concern, O'Neill," Teal'c began.
"I don't think you
do!" Daniel contradicted stormily.
"To negotiate with
those your laws deem terrorists is-" Teal'c patiently tried again.
"Irrelevant!"
Daniel sat up shakily, angered and confused by Teal'c's
incomprehension. "I'm talking about you!" Distressed, he
caught himself up on this thought, realising he was drawing a line
here, distancing himself from his friends. "I don't care
what Hammond thought he was doing or who he thought he was doing it
for, he was wrong! This was wrong. We should be
dead. I'd rather be dead!"
"Daniel!"
The shocked gasp
wrenched Daniel's head around to meet Sam's wide, hurt
eyes. Fraiser was with her, the general behind them.
"How could you do
this!" Daniel raged. "How could you! You - you knew!
You had to!"
"Those murdering
bastards," Jack snarled, storming to his feet and staggering as he was
struck by a wave of dizziness. Deciding they could all kiss his
raggedy bare ass, he shied away from the help Teal'c offered, turning
to plant his back against the wall, one hand clenched heavily on
Daniel's shoulder. "They were laughing at us. The whole
time - laughing!" It filled him with killing rage.
Daniel shuddered at
the memory of his fine defiance, understanding at last why the Speaker
had let him ramble on to the bitter end. The Conclave, probably
every Mirin official standing there had known the deal had been
struck. The Speaker disliked Daniel too intensely to give him
anything. He'd wanted them to suffer, thinking they were dying
and then, knowing how they felt about it - this. Exactly this.
"God," Daniel
whispered.
"Colonel, Dr.
Jackson, calm yourselves." As he was speaking, General Hammond
pushed past Sam and Fraiser, stepping out front and centre, centring
them as he always did.
"Explain," Teal'c
invited, his concern for them evident.
"You made a deal
with mass murderers!" Daniel passionately accused the general. He
was at a loss to understand the lack of reaction from his friends and
too angry to be anything other than direct in his questions.
"We did what?"
Hammond demanded sharply, taken aback by Daniel's vehemence.
"Daniel, we don't
know what you mean," Sam said pacifically, moving over to stand at the
foot of Daniel's bed while Fraiser busied herself with Daniel's
charts. "The general - all of us! - had to work hard to convince
the President to agree to negotiate, even taking into consideration the
humanitarian need of the Mirin."
"Hum-humanitarian?"
Daniel stammered in stunned dismay. "Euthanasia?"
Everyone was shocked
instantly into silence, gaping at Daniel in incredulous horror.
"That's the deal you
made," Jack enunciated contemptuously as they looked at each other in
confusion. "Don't pretend it's anything else."
"Colonel, I don't
care for your tone or your meaning," Hammond retorted, frowning
heavily. "Loathe though I am to negotiate with terrorists, Major
Carter and Teal'c's investigations eventually convinced me the Mirin
would keep their word to release you and as all contact with their
world was to be severed after the delivery of the naquadah and the two
of you, I decided the risk was acceptable."
"It was not
acceptable!" Daniel argued fierily. "You're not hearing me.
The penicillin you supplied to the Mirin will be used to develop a drug
for state-sanctioned, systematic euthanasia. They were only
interested in the toxicity of the penicillin, in killing, not healing."
"Doctor?" Hammond
turned to Fraiser.
"Every adult over
the age of fifty years, every defective child - everyone who can't or
won't pull their weight as the Conclave demands," Jack fired at the
general before Fraiser could speak, "is terminated. You get
that? Ter-min-at-ed," he enunciated offensively, miming his
throat being cut.
"I don't know what
you're talking about," Sam said slowly.
"Which means it
can't be true?" Daniel demanded dangerously, not missing her swift
exchange of knowing glances with the general. "It doesn't matter
how sanctimonious you act, Sam," he hissed in frustration at her
infuriating closed-mindedness. "Or how arrogant you are."
Daniel ignored Sam's suddenly narrowed eyes and pinched lips, Fraiser's
angry double-take. "You should know. You saw what I saw,
you heard what I heard. We talked! You know we did, right
before you gated through. I told you I was worried, that
something felt very wrong to me. It should have been
enough!" He glared up at her, angry beyond reason. How
could she have ignored him? How could she? "I t-told you!"
he stuttered furiously. "I asked questions. Why didn't you?"
"Easy, son," Hammond
soothed.
"No, I don't think
so. Not this time. I want answers!" Daniel glared at
Sam, their gazes clashing.
"As do I," Teal'c
said slowly, looking deeply troubled. "I do not doubt your word,
DanielJackson, nor do I doubt Major Carter. Yet you cannot both
be right."
"Did you do this,
Sam? Did you?" Daniel challenged.
"Yes, I did this!"
Sam snapped. "I did it to save you. I didn't want to give
the Mirin what they needed, not when they took you, but what choice did
we have? People were dying! You were dying!"
"People," Jack
corrected with cutting precision, "were being killed." He clapped
his hands slowly, insultingly, driving the angry flush clear across
Sam's face. "Way to go, Major. You not only let the Mirin
know there was a whole new way to go on with the slaughter, you
actually handed over the means to do it."
Was it fair to feel
so betrayed? Daniel didn't know, only that he was. He
trusted Sam. It had never occurred to him, not once, that she
would just accept what she saw on Mirin. He had told her
and he'd believed she would take him on faith. Did he and Jack
matter to her so much she hadn't questioned, hadn't wanted to know
anything that would make her leave them behind? It was hard for
Sam, he knew that. Her loyalty was an important thing in his life.
He didn't, god, he
really didn't want it to be because of him. He'd let go of
himself, of his life, believing it was right. Could he have let
go of Sam if he were the one on Earth and she was held by the
Mirin? Of Jack? In their prison cell, Daniel had thought he
would and could. Now he didn't have that certainty any
longer. It was naïve to think that only he would die for his
principles. He'd always known that principles killed. Maybe
there was no choice at all. If he'd been the one to be left
behind on Earth, making a choice that determined if his friends lived
or died, a big part of him would have died anyway, no matter the
outcome. He didn't think there was a choice he could have lived
with.
"Were you so certain
you were right?" Daniel whispered, pleading, gazing up at Sam.
She could say nothing, paling and blinking fiercely as her anger
evaporated, leaving her shaken and staring as she began at last to
question. Far, far too late. Unutterably defeated, Daniel
slumped exhausted against the hard pillows, roughly rubbing his palms
over aching eyes. He couldn't bear to look at her.
For the first time, he had nothing to give, nothing, and he didn't know
what to do with that.
"That is unfair,
DanielJackson," Teal'c rebuked him. "I believe Major Carter
thought only of you."
"What does it
matter?" Daniel sighed. "The Mirin will go on killing and
we're responsible."
"Not us," Jack
countered flatly, his meaning specific.
"We're a team," Sam
said softly, her voice not quite a plea.
"I know why,
Carter," Jack answered wearily, unable to look at her. "I just
don't know how."
"Euthanasia?"
Fraiser asked haltingly, appalled, perhaps more than any of them, at
the very notion.
"What do you want us
to say?" Jack shrugged. "Carter spilled her guts without
realising the consequences. Daniel started asking questions soon
after we got there, when he saw how travellers were kept isolated from
the population and he kept right on asking 'em after Carter gated back,
the wrong questions or maybe the right questions. I don't
know. Either way, I got us captured because I split my team,"
Jack confessed roughly, daring anyone to contradict him.
"Daniel told me what
he'd already told Carter on the way back from the Stargate," he went
on, staring her down, watching as her head dropped. "I was there,
I finally opened my eyes, took a look around and saw what was wrong
with the picture. There weren't any old people. None.
Not a single person past my age. It was like one of those
freakin' optical illusions, now you see it, now you don't. Carter
could've seen it too, she had the goddamned video, but apparently she
didn’t, so you didn't figure out what the Mirin would do with the
antibiotic. You wanted to save us. Do we really need to do
this? Do we need to blame someone?"
"People will still
die and we'll still be responsible," General Hammond replied, his eyes
shadowed and old. "Isn't that what you're saying?"
"We didn't mean,"
Sam tried to explain, her strain very evident.
"I don't care what
you meant!" Jack flared at her, ugly again. "I care what you did."
"We did," the
general amended heavily, refusing to abrogate his responsibility.
"It appears that
false assumptions were made by all," Teal'c observed evenly. "We
share this burden."
"Killing people we
were trying to help?" Struggling with all of it, perhaps the part she
had played most of all, Sam turned instinctively to Fraiser for support
only to find Fraiser as much in need of it as herself, as lost in her
part as Sam was.
"It isn't the first
time," Jack reminded them all.
"I don't know that
there's anything to be gained by recrimination, Colonel," Hammond
remarked. "We'll need to debrief fully, as soon as you gentlemen
are feeling up to it."
Fraiser jumped at
this, abruptly recalled to duty.
"There will be
consequences?" Teal'c asked the general, raising an eyebrow
questioningly.
"There will,"
Hammond acknowledged straight-forwardly. "We pushed this to the
limit in negotiating the exchange of the antibiotic for the
naquadah and for Colonel O'Neill and Dr. Jackson."
"Will we be
court-martialled?"
"I expect so,
Major," Hammond answered Sam's quiet question. "We appear to have
collaborated, however unwittingly, in mass murder. I believe that
makes us accessories after the fact."
She dropped her head
then, folding in on herself in her guilt and confusion.
"Ignorance is not a
defence accepted by your laws," Teal'c commented.
"No," Sam agreed,
her devastation beginning to show through the cracks in her
composure. "No defence at all."
"Court-martial?"
Daniel repeated.
"The three of us,"
Jack confirmed. "And you'll be the star witness."
Sam looked up then,
her eyes filled with unshed tears. "For the prosecution."
"There won't be a
court-martial," Daniel said stupidly, looking blankly up at Jack.
"Don't you see? The President authorised the
exchange. If you're court-martialled, you'll not only
breach the security of the Stargate programme but you'll implicate the
President and you'll bring him down. They won't allow that to
happen. The Mirin are cut off from us which means it's my word
against Sam's."
They were all
staring at him now, even Jack, as far from him in understanding as they
had ever been.
Daniel guessed he was
going to have to spell it out for them.
"When have any of
you ever taken that? It seems that no matter how often I'm proved
right, you don't learn from past experience. I have to fight,
have to prove myself over and over again to earn the kind of respect
and credence you grant Sam automatically. The reaction I get most
often is condescension," he glanced up involuntarily at Jack, "and
inappropriate sarcasm."
Daniel wasn't
prepared for how sore and achy he was, even after his first hot shower
in weeks, how much time and care it took him to dress, moving slowly
from his locker to the nearest bench then back again for the next item.
"Are you
hurting? I tried to be careful, but I wanted you so much, I got
kind of lost there," Jack apologised remorsefully from right behind
Daniel, making him jump.
"A little," Daniel
admitted uncomfortably, unable to deal with such a direct reminder of
what he and Jack had so unexpectedly done together.
"Sorry," Jack
whispered, kissing the nape of Daniel's neck. His arms came
around Daniel, pulling him in to rest against him. "I know we
need to talk, Daniel. Just ride out the debriefing, okay?
We'll have time then."
"It's not
important," Daniel said quietly.
"You're important."
Daniel didn't know
what to say to this, so he said nothing. Jack was holding onto
him, while he just stood there, his whole body tight and
defensive. He was scared and Jack probably knew this. There
was too much intensity, too many memories crowding thick and vivid, of
skin sliding over him and into him, eager mouths, heat and touch.
"What a mess," Jack
sighed.
"With an easy
solution," Daniel argued sturdily.
"We won't lie!" Jack
snapped.
"No, I know that,
Jack," Daniel answered pacifically. Jack and the general, Sam,
all of them would tell the truth as they saw it. It was Daniel
who would have to lie. He didn't say anything because he was too
tired to have to fight it out with Jack now and then again in the
debriefing.
He wished he'd had
even a few minutes alone, to think, to try to sort things through in
his mind. There were too many people wanting a piece of him, too
many jarring voices and demands. There were no reassurances
Daniel could offer anyone and he didn't feel able to let his friends
rationalise away what had happened. He couldn't.
Once again he was
right, and once again he would have to be wrong. It always seemed
to work this way, always seemed to be him. He had to work harder
for trust, for belief, had to allay the same suspicions and fears every
time he needed his friends to take him on faith. It made him
miserably conscious of all the differences between himself and Jack,
differences which Jack at least wasn't always able to work past.
Was it the way
Daniel did his job? His role was fundamental, evolving over time
until it was understood he would be the one to make the necessary
leaps, to intuit and think outside the box. When this was asked
of him, expected and relied upon, why did it open him to thinly
concealed doubts and confident negativity again and again?
Or was it
simpler? Was it him?
Jack let go of him
and moved around to stand at his side, leaning casually against the
shelves which bordered his closet. Jack seemed unaware of how
close he was to Daniel, how far inside his personal space he was, so
close Daniel could feel the heat of his body. It certainly wasn't
any easier on Daniel to have Jack watching him and trying to read him
than it had been to have Jack behind him. Holding him.
He glanced up,
trying to smile. "I don't know what to say to you," he admitted
helplessly. "I don't even know what to think." He was even
less sure of what he was supposed to be feeling. Numb and nervy
didn't seem much of a response to a man who was still his closest
friend, even if they had - if they'd - they'd fucked. "You
changed everything," Daniel blurted out, not really meaning to,
regretting it instantly. This was the last thing he wanted to get
into.
"We'll make sense of
it," Jack promised. "We have to."
"I'm so tired,"
Daniel sighed, closing his eyes for a moment.
Jack's hand came up
to cup his face and Daniel did well not to shift away from him.
Even sitting at
Daniel's side, Jack felt as if he were miles away. The mood in
the briefing room was cutting. Daniel was doing his best, tying
himself into knots trying to react naturally, but Jack could see the
stiff nervousness he couldn't quite suppress. Daniel was closing
in on himself, withdrawing from Jack and from everyone else, and there
was nothing he could do about it here.
"What would you say
on the stand, Sam?" Daniel asked a little impatiently.
"I wouldn't lie!"
Carter snapped defensively, unconsciously echoing what Jack had said
earlier.
"I didn't suggest
you would," Daniel rebuked her mildly. "Only that your version of
events opposes mine. I don't know why you're arguing what is
after all a matter of fact, not supposition. You saw nothing to
make you question your assessment of the situation on Mirin, you saw no
evidence of systematic euthanasia and that is exactly what you would
testify."
For once, Carter
wasn't able to come up with a rebuttal to Daniel's mild
observations. She sat there in thwarted silence, her fingers
twisting in contradiction of her seeming composure. Fraiser was
so anxious about her, she was practically in the chair with her.
Jack guessed he
wasn't the only who could see where this was going. Ugly.
Daniel wouldn't spare himself and because of it, he wouldn't spare
Carter either. A line was being drawn, sides taken, Daniel on one
side and Carter on the other. Teal'c had walked in, seen Daniel
and Jack sitting together, then calmly walked right past Carter and
Fraiser to skirt the foot of the table and take the chair next to
Daniel's. Hammond sat in his accustomed position at the head of
them, looking about as grim as Jack had ever seen him.
The trouble, Jack
thought, was that everyone wanted to do the right thing and it wasn't
possible. It was too late. They'd been arguing fruitlessly
in circles for over an hour now and he was beginning to understand that
they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. They were
not going to be able to find a solution to this.
"Answer the
question, Carter," he ordered brusquely. He didn't want to
prolong the agony and the silences were the worst. Everyone was
hurting, everyone was questioning, everyone was going to carry the
consequences of one of the worst fuck-ups of their careers. It
wasn't that he didn't care about his team, it was just that he cared
about Daniel more. "Did you see any evidence of euthanasia?"
Carter's lips
thinned. "No, Sir."
"Do you believe that
Daniel did?" he asked coldly, not in the mood to cut her any
slack. He personally wasn't going to come off as Dudley Fucking
Do-Right whether this got to a court martial or not but it didn't stop
him resenting the hell out of Carter. If she'd kept her big mouth
shut and her mind open maybe a lot of this would have played out
differently. She was always so goddamned certain of
everything. Daniel had had no more information than she
did. He hadn't seen anything, been any place she hadn't.
Daniel had just put it all together in a way Carter maybe
couldn't. Maybe if Daniel hadn’t talked to her, Jack would be
able to swallow this. As it was, he wasn't inclined to help her
wriggle off this hook of her own making. And his.
"Do you, Sam?"
Daniel asked softly. "Can you trust me enough to accept your own
limitations?"
Hammond made a hasty
movement, as if he would object, then he subsided, indicating to Sam
she should answer the question.
"Can you accept that
I was right and you were wrong on the basis of what I saw and you
didn't? Not only on what we discussed, but on the questions I
asked later of the Conclave, the answers I was given?" Daniel went on,
his voice still soft but oddly intent.
Carter was
struggling to tell Daniel what he wanted and needed, even deserved to
hear, and even though they could all see how much she was hurting
Daniel, she couldn't make herself do it.
"How many old people
did you see, Sam?" Daniel asked more quietly still.
This was the
difference, the only one that Jack knew. Daniel walking back from
the Stargate after they waved off Carter and Teal'c, edgy and quiet,
looking around him at the tree-lined streets and all the shiny, happy
people, by trying to get Jack to see what he did. None of the
Mirin they saw were old. None.
Daniel was no one's
fool. He connected the dots right to the penicillin and the many,
many detailed questions the Mirin doctors asked about its lovely toxic
side-effects. Demonstrating proper, commendable scientific
caution, apparently, according to Carter. Daniel didn't confront,
he didn't compromise. He just asked questions. Lots of
questions. History and myth, physiology and law, medicine and
religion. And because the questions were each so innocent in
themselves, he got answers.
The Speaker wasn't a
fool either, he'd played this routine a thousand times before and it
all went south on them quick and hard, the guard cutting them off even
before they made it out of the enclave travellers were segregated in.
Carter was thinking
now, thinking furiously, genuinely perplexed.
"Bring up the video
footage you shot," Jack ordered.
She went at once to
obey him, obviously glad to buy a little time.
"Mirin physiology is
similar to our own, but it's not an exact copy," Fraiser piped up,
trying to fill another difficult silence. "It is possible their
lifespan is naturally shorter." She did not sound as if she
believed this. She sounded not-waving-but-drowning.
"He knows," Jack
observed crisply before Daniel could answer, lacing his fingers
together on the table before him. He could at least look as if he
were calm and controlled. "He asked." He noticed then that
he and Teal'c were each clasping their hands the same way, both
mirroring Daniel, who was too upset to be still.
Carter took her seat
again, the remote in her hand as she cued up the mission footage on the
monitor.
"Ignore the hospital
stuff," Jack instructed. "Just look at the crowd scenes.
The stuff in the streets and the Hall of Voices." Checking
through those scenes, she would see it now, he guessed, now she knew
what it was she was supposed to be seeing. He had. He just
needed Daniel to tell him and he saw it clear as day. "Look at
the people we weren't allowed to interact with or question."
Turning their
chairs, Carter and Fraiser viewed the footage, skimming here, then
pausing there, making a thorough job of it, advancing frame by
frame. Jack watched them until he could see the realisation, the
same slow dawning horror he had felt, then, guessing Carter got the
point now, he watched Daniel.
Weird how one of the
best days of his life was also one of the worst. Daniel was his
if he could only hold onto him. Jack had to get them through this
somehow, then he had to get Daniel away. There was too much
grief, too much guilt and distance separating Daniel from the people he
loved most and who had the most power to hurt him. Jack couldn't
see a way through which wouldn't destroy them all, whether the
knowledge of what had happened on Mirin left the briefing room or not.
It had happened too
often recently, Daniel having to stand and fight them all. Jack
had been wrong too often, Carter had been wrong, while Teal'c watched
each of them, kept his own counsel and made his own choice who to
follow just as he always did.
Jack didn't want to
fight Daniel now, but he still didn't know whose side he was on.
He couldn't just walk away from this. He had to take
responsibility, had to give some sort of account of himself and the
choices he'd made.
"Oh my god," Carter
whispered as agonised realisation slammed home.
"Buy a clue, did
we?" Jack drawled offensively, anger boiling up again from nowhere.
"Colonel," Hammond
warned him.
"It appears
DanielJackson was correct in his deductions," Teal'c observed. "I
do not believe it is possible for every adult Mirin to die of natural
causes at the exact same age."
"No," Fraiser
seconded him bitterly, "it isn't."
"It defies the
uncertainty principle," Carter snapped. "Why didn't I see it?"
she burst out.
"I believe you
thought only of O'Neill and DanielJackson," Teal'c answered her kindly.
"I should have seen
it!" Carter argued angrily.
"Yes," Jack agreed
icily, even though he hadn't either. "But you didn't. You
didn't listen to Daniel."
"There is no doubt
in anyone's mind that the Mirin are practicing euthanasia?" Hammond
asked gravely, looking at each of them in turn.
"They needed the
penicillin because the people are resistant to the existing methods,
correct?" Fraiser confirmed curtly. "Microbial resistance.
I'm guessing they were specifically interested in the penicillin
allergens, in the possibility of synthesising a powerful toxin to
induce instantaneous, fatal anaphylactic shock. Sam," she
hesitated with a quick, sidelong look to her friend, "reported the
Mirin concerns over anaphylaxis."
"You call 'em when
you know 'em, Doc."
"Jack."
Daniel's reproving
eyes met Jack's for just a moment. He nodded reluctantly in
answer and sat back, trying to let his anger go for now for Daniel's
sake.
"It's possible the
antibiotic may not affect them at all," Fraiser suggested, looking down
at the table top. "Their physiology-"
"Wouldn't that be
convenient?" Carter hooted abrasively, shaking her head in firm
denial. "We kept our end of the bargain, Janet. We couldn't
take that kind of risk." She glanced fleetingly at Daniel, her
face pinched with misery. "We couldn't."
"I
understand." Daniel winced, or maybe he tried to smile.
"You acted in good faith and you each worked and compromised to get us
home. We do know that."
"It just doesn't
change the fact we were wrong," Carter sighed, not about to go easy on
herself.
"I'm not exactly
Snow White, here, Carter," Jack interjected. "I made the stellar
decision to split the team. Maybe four of us could have shot our
way out of there when the Mirin decided to stack the deck in their
favour, maybe not. Two definitely couldn't."
"This is pointless,"
Daniel said tiredly. "There won't be a court-martial. There
won't be any kind of enquiry or recommendation made outside this
room. If the General tries, the NID will bury it. I know
that you're all honourable people, that you take your oath of service
to your country and your duty as Air Force officers seriously. I
know that you want closure and in a way, a court-martial would be the
only closure conceivable." Daniel's empathy and distress for what
they were going through was very evident. "I understand, I really
do, but it won't happen."
"The threat to the
President?" Hammond queried.
"Also the threat to
me," Daniel pointed out hesitantly.
Carter snapped
bolt-upright. "To you?" she fired at Daniel, hostile and
glowering. Whatever this unknown threat was, it was clear it
would have to get past her first.
Jack had a helluva
team, for one reason. His people were the best.
"Witness for the
prosecution," Daniel reminded Carter gently.
"We've all seen the
evidence," Carter argued aggressively.
"Circumstantial at
best," Daniel retorted.
"So doing the right
thing is the wrong thing?" Raging, Jack slammed his hand off the table
and jumped up to pace off some of his frustration, prowling back and
forth in front of the window which looked down on the Stargate.
"Dr. Jackson is
correct," Hammond acknowledged heavily. "Our careers would be
over no matter the outcome if we compromised the security of this
command and implicated the Joint Chiefs and the President as
accessories to murder simply to assuage our own sense of guilt and
culpability."
Something was
niggling at Jack. "The threat to you?" he asked Daniel sharply.
"I don't think the
NID would hesitate to pile on the pressure in order to persuade General
Hammond of the correct command decision," Daniel said calmly. "Do
you? I could be removed from SG-1 or the SGC outright with very
little effort."
"I wouldn't allow
it!" Hammond retorted.
Daniel leaned
forward, one long, elegantly precise finger tapping on the table
top. "As you would yourself be compromised, Sir, you wouldn't be
able to prevent it. Colonel Simmons has already made more than
clear my manifest unsuitability for a position on a field unit."
He looked up at Jack then, his eyes a mystery. "Too emotional."
"So maybe we should
be looking at the worst case scenario?" Carter suggested, reviving a
little over something she could think her way through.
Jack thought she
sounded a helluva lot better than she looked. He expected she'd
be up nights for a very long time to come. He couldn't help
thinking that she should be. An error like this could make as
easily as it could break. Carter had backbone. She wouldn't
run. Experience was the hardest, perhaps the only teacher.
If she got through this, she'd be a better officer for it and maybe a
better person.
"The worst case
scenario would be a successful court-martial in which each of you
receives a prison sentence, DanielJackson is removed from the SGC and I
am re-located to Area 51 for medical experimentation."
They all looked
around at Teal'c.
He smiled blandly
back at them.
"While Colonel
Simmons replaces General Hammond with a puppet of the NID," he added
after a measured pause.
"Anything else?"
Jack asked sarcastically.
Teal'c bowed.
"Senator Kinsey is elected President after the present incumbent is
impeached, tried and sentenced to imprisonment."
"I think it's more
likely that your USAF defence attorneys would destroy my credibility on
the stand," Daniel said at last, still blinking over Teal'c's truly
world-class pessimism. "They won't even have to work very
hard. All they have to do is look over our mission reports and
they'll find plenty to work with."
"Excuse me?" Jack
sat back down, staring at Daniel as Carter and the others braced
themselves for another argument.
"'It's not that we
don't believe you, Daniel, it's just that we don't believe you',"
Daniel quoted. He reached up, his fingers running absently up his
arm to his shoulder. "I still have the scar from the staff weapon
Teal'c - the alternate Teal'c - shot me with."
Jack took it hard
that Daniel still remembered something like this after all the time
that had passed and all they had done as a team. "We acted on
what you told us!" he objected.
"Only after Kinsey
shut down the Stargate programme and you literally had nothing to
lose," Daniel corrected him steadily. "In a strange way, he saved
the world," he added whimsically. "If he hadn't acted as he did,
I would have had to go through the gate on my own."
No one had a
response for Daniel, glib or otherwise.
"That's just an
example. There are other missions, other reports."
"Pick one!" Jack
fired at him, unable to believe what he was hearing.
Daniel looked at him
for a very long time, the silence stretching out to breaking
point. "Sha'uri using the ribbon device to transmit to me
knowledge of the Harsesis as Amaunet was killing me. The powers
of Oma Desala which were all around us and no one saw. My
suspicions of the Eurondans and their dirty little war. The
conflict between the Ghadmeer and the Enkarrans. Seeing Stargates
in my closet. Getting addicted to a sarcophagus. Hathor,
Shyla, Ke'ra. Having a Goa'uld for a wife and an
ex-girlfriend. Offering myself up as a host."
Jack figured this
was enough, more than enough, that Daniel should move on and never look
back.
"Getting ribboned -
repeatedly. Forcing Jack to choose between Skaara and me, Teal'c
between Sha'uri and me. Baiting sundry snakes after they've
disarmed us. Letting my brains get scrambled by Nem's memory
device after he said it was too dangerous. Having a grandfather
who's spent the last twenty years in the loony bin and thought I was
nuts. Looking right into the eyes of a crystal skull despite the
legend I told all of you about and getting myself shifted out of
phase. Trying to talk to empty rooms, sentient bacteria and the
animals. Filming plants. Getting my brains scrambled by
Shifu. Getting addicted again and almost taking a swan-dive off
my balcony. I could go on."
"No!"
"Or there are my
medical records," Daniel went on remorselessly.
Fraiser shifted
uncomfortably in her seat, eyeing Daniel warily.
"Addiction,
hallucinations," Daniel ticked off each point on his fingers.
"Insanity." He grimaced. "It runs in the family.
Addiction - again, attempted suicide."
"Daniel," Carter
objected distressfully, uselessly.
"You had visions and
we went half-way across the universe on your say-so, Sam," Daniel
shrugged as if this didn't matter to him at all. "I had visions
and I was locked away in Mental Health."
Suddenly looking as
stricken as Carter, Fraiser's head dropped.
"Ultimately we were
both right, but where Jack and the General supported you because of who
you are, because of your reputation, it was easier for Dr. Fraiser and
Dr. Mackenzie to write me off as psychotic than to investigate a
physical cause for my hallucinations. You all went along with
that." Daniel wasn't finding this easy to say, but he went on
regardless. "Because of who I am, because of what I'm considered
to be, even by my own teammates. On a good day, a little
flaky."
Jack cringed.
"Dr. Jackson,"
Hammond protested.
"Tell me that if Sam
saw Goa'uld in her closet you wouldn't have checked her exhaustively,
then checked and re-checked until you found something, because it's
Sam," Daniel proudly challenged Janet, all of them. "Tell
me." He shook his head when Janet looked helplessly at him.
"You can't, can you?"
"We have every
confidence in you, son." His dismay evident, the general tried
again to reassure Daniel.
"Absolutely," Daniel
agreed wholeheartedly. "After I prove to you what I'm
saying. I couldn't prove it to Sam, she only had my word
something was very wrong on Mirin and it wasn't enough for her."
It had to build up,
didn't it? All those small, seemingly unimportant blows to
confidence and self-esteem. The glib remarks which kept Jack on
top and cut Daniel so deep he didn't forget them. It's not that
we don't believe you? Jesus. How could he say something
like that to Daniel? How?
Jack was ugly
inside, he knew that better than anyone. Didn't want anyone else
to know. Except, Daniel did. He understood all the rage and
the guilt, the loathing, and he accepted. He never tried to
change Jack any more than he tried to excuse him. Daniel didn't
have that kind of arrogance. He just had faith. That Jack
would hear him, accept him in turn, and maybe, just maybe, Jack would
change himself.
He never knew that
no one had hurt Daniel as much as he had. No one else
could. He should have guessed. Daniel didn't feel for
anyone what he felt for Jack. They'd shared the smallest part of
what they were together on Mirin. Jack wanted it passionately,
that oneness. He wanted Daniel but it was no longer clear to him
that Daniel wanted him. Too much baggage, too many rejections and
small, incidental hurts inflicted he hadn't even seen.
"Alternatively, the
NID could take away our only piece of circumstantial evidence in the
mission tape and just cut my brake lines or something," Daniel pointed
out oh-so-casually. "Which would permanently solve the problem."
"I would not permit
such a thing to happen," Teal'c said stonily, his eyes deadly.
"There's nothing we
can do," Carter recognised the trap they were in, grieved and
bewildered by her impotence. "Nothing."
"There is not,"
Teal'c agreed softly.
"And we deserve
it." Jack was looking at Daniel, his head bowed low, alone with
all his friends around him. "We have to live with all of this
because anything we do will hit Daniel harder than it hits us. We
fucked up! Us! Daniel does not pay for it. Not this
time."
"I'm struggling with
all of this," General Hammond admitted. "It is anathema to me to
suppress an error of this magnitude. We may have acted in
ignorance and with the best of intentions but it doesn't change the
consequences, not for the Mirin, not for us, and not for Dr.
Jackson. I find I cannot disagree with his remarkably cogent
assessment of the likely response of the NID to the threat posed by any
action we take at this point to expose our error. They've
committed far worse crimes than the suppression of evidence, the
rigging of courts martial and the murder of civilians, a fact of which
we are all too aware."
He looked at his
abject first team, a proud man, and one who was suffering now.
"It seems that any response we make to this will be morally and
ethically wrong. It remains to decide which course of action will
do the least harm to those for whom we've accepted responsibility and
will best fulfil our obligations to this command and to the President."
"I can lie," Carter
offered unsteadily, her eyes very bright. "For Daniel, I will."
Teal'c bowed.
"As will I."
Fraiser nodded
brusquely.
"Wouldn't be the
first time," Jack said dryly.
Daniel lifted his
head then. "I don't have any choice," he said bleakly.
Hammond looked
gently at him. "Nor do I."
Back to Part One / On to Part Three
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